Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
Say, you guys remember Ghost Dad? It had Bill Cosby in it as a father who (in a twist I did NOT see coming) was a ghost. Some may be wondering why I’m citing a Bill Cosby family comedy in a review of Resident Evil: Extinction.
Because, silly, Ghost Dad is scarier.
Every two or three years another Resident Evil movie comes out, and every two or three years I have the same damn complaints. I guess I should praise the consistency if, for no other reason, than that there is nothing else for me to praise about these movies. Let me put it into perspective: Taking a cue from Roger Ebert, the mandatory bare minimum star rating for a positive review of mine is three stars. If you add all the star ratings I gave the three films in this franchise? You’d get two and a half.
Alice (Milla Jovovich) and a team of rag-tag survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse roam about the deserts of America, looking for food, water, gas, guns and hope. They are endlessly pursued by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation, hoping to find Alice and get an antivirus from her blood, to reverse the zombifying T-Virus. After the T-Virus wiped out most of humanity, the forests turned to deserts and lakes and rivers dried up…
Okay, stop right there. Now I’m not an environmental Whiz-Kid or anything, but, um…if about seven billion people are turned into the slathering undead…DOES THAT STOP THE FUCKING RAIN? If lack of humanity puts the water-cycle to a halt, that is seriously news to me. If anything, things would get greener and colder because no one is driving or using electricity. Emissions would go WAY down. It’s like Carlin said: The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked.
And it is because of this that I couldn’t get into Resident Evil: Extinction. If the underlying premise is shot, you have no movie. That’s like dropping a baseball at your feet and being stunned that it doesn’t curve at ninety miles an hour. Here’s another thing: Wouldn’t the intense heat of these deserts dry the zombies out and make them all crumbly? I mean the joint fluid and blood would dry up, cracking them into little undead pieces when they tried to move in the intense, dry heat. Oh, wait, that falls under evaporation which, as proven above, screenwriter Paul W.S. Anderson knows ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING ABOUT!
Now, I know I shouldn’t ask questions, but…no. Fuck that. I SHOULD ask questions. Raiders of the Lost Ark was as preposterous as all hell, too. But that was a classic because it did everything right. I DIDN’T ask questions during that movie. You don’t want me poking holes in your film? Then do a better fucking job.
Resident Evil: Extinction doesn’t even ask the big question I have had all throughout this trilogy: How does Umbrella stand to make money with a Virus that turns everyone into zombies? But never mind.
But as I’ve said, third verse same as the first. Now I’m a big fan of zombie pictures, but the Romero and Boyle and Fresnadillo and Wright pictures have brains, ideas and characters. Resident Evil: Extinction has none of these. Run, shoot and get blood everywhere.
This I would not mind, if the running and shooting and getting blood everywhere were done well. This is a gory picture, but the camera shakes so goddamn much that I couldn’t even see it. Think of the colossal waste of time and money this constitutes. People sat in makeup chairs for hours, having prosthetics and squibs applied by highly trained and highly paid technicians, only to be seen shakily and only for a second. I am not surprised by this. Resident Evil: Extinction was directed by Russell Mulcahy, the horrible, horrible human being that committed the cinematic war-crime Highlander 2.
Even this—EVEN THIS!—I would forgive, were there some acting I could sink my teeth into. Acting can save a movie all on its lonesome. But it is not the case here. It starts with Milla Jovovich. It has been fifteen years since I saw Jovovich on the big screen for the first time (in Attenborough’s Chaplin, for the record) and I still have no idea whether she can act or not. She’s devoted a lot of her time to wire-fu and not saying anything.
And here’s another thing. What the fuck is up with her FACE in this movie? Not her actual physical visage, but more what was done to it. It seems as though she’s digitally airbrushed and augmented. I don’t know if this was actually done or not, but if it WASN’T, then this woman is a terminally youthful alien creature that has never smiled, laughed, cried or furrowed her brow in anger. Judging from the level of her acting talent, this could very well be a distinct possibility.
But if it WAS, then I was fully justified in my feeling there were times looking at her in this picture where I was reminded of The Polar Express…
Which is yet another movie that’s scarier than Resident Evil: Extinction.
Popularity: 9% [?]
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